In Westboro, two named parade grand marshals

A Vietnam War veteran and a highly decorated State Department special agent killed in Iraq six years ago have been named grand marshals of the Memorial Day ceremonies.

Ceremonies will begin Monday at 8:30 a.m. at St. Luke’s Cemetery followed by another service at Pine Grove Cemetery at 9 a.m. From Pine Grove, the parade will march down South Street to Midland Cemetery and then to the Forbes Municipal Building and war memorials.

John Jacob Leonard Matson and Stephen Eric Sullivan were announced this week as the annual parade’s grand marshals.

The honor is given posthumously to Mr. Sullivan, a Westboro native who was killed in a car bombing in Iraq in September 2005. Mr. Sullivan will be represented by his family in the parade.

Mr. Sullivan was a 1983 graduate of Westboro High School and he joined the U.S. Marines in 1984, where he was trained as a field radio operator. In 1993 he joined the U.S. Navy as a hospital corpsman and became an emergency medical technician. He served as assistant to the head of medicine at San Diego’s Naval Medical Center.

After earning a master’s degree in forensic science from National University in La Jolla, Calif., in 2000, he joined diplomatic security at the State Department and was assigned to the Miami field office.

In 2004, he was awarded the State Department’s Extra Mile Award for his role in apprehending two career criminals, and later that year volunteered to go to Afghanistan, where he was again honored for his work as a lead advance agent for the protective details during that country’s presidential elections and he served as shift leader during the inauguration of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Mr. Sullivan went to Iraq in 2005 after a brief visit to Washington D.C. and Westboro. He was working a protective detail when he and three private security agents were killed when a car bomb exploded.

Mr. Sullivan has posthumously been awarded the Thomas Jefferson Star for Foreign Service, the Medal of Valor by the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Foreign Service Star and a certificate signed by the U.S. president and secretary of state. Mr. Sullivan also has had one of the largest facilities in Kabul, Afghanistan, named for him: Camp Sullivan.

Mr. Sullivan is survived by parents Robert and Diane, and his sisters Erin Sullivan and Shauna Oliveri.

Mr. Matson, 68, is an Army veteran who was assigned to the 1st Infantry Division’s Military Detachment, 12 miles outside of Saigon. There, he worked with several English-speaking soldiers from the Republic of Vietnam, and together they interrogated prisoners of war to gain critical information about enemy troop movements, weapon caches, supplies and equipment. The interpreters also translated captured documents, and those documents were used to launch air strikes.

Mr. Matson’s base camps from January to March 1968 were Divan and Lai Khe, both of which receive heavy shelling.

Mr. Matson separated from the Army as a 1st lieutenant and received the National Defense Service Ribbon, the Good Conduct Medal, the Sharpshooter (M-14) Medal, the Vietnam Service Medal, the Vietnam Campaign Medal, and the Bronze Star for service.

In 1971, Mr. Matson graduated from Suffolk Law School and three years later received his law degree from George Washington University. He moved to Westboro in 1974, worked in the Wyman-Gordon law department and opened a practice in Westboro in 1987.

Mr. Matson and his wife, Ann, have two children and two grandchildren.